Tell me more ×
WordPress Answers is a question and answer site for WordPress developers and administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite
1

I'm a combination Drupal and WordPress developer and have recently started playing with Drupal's Panels module -- which allows you to create flexible layouts and drop content blocks (The Drupal equivalent of widgets) in place on either a per-layout or per-content item basis.

I'm now working on a WordPress project that would really benefit from this kind of functionality — is there anything in WordPress at the moment that even slightly resembles Panels? I guess PageLines is a bit like that, but that's pretty expensive. I also came across "Drag and Drop Visual Editor and Publisher", but I tried the demo and it's full of typos and looks really beta.

(FWIW, I know I'm complaining that a commercial project is too expensive and that an open-source project looks non-commercial -- but c'mon, WordPress has 6x the adoption rate of Drupal, it has to have this kind of fairly important functionality somehow.)

Thoughts?

share|improve this question
Do you want to select widgets from the post type pages? Or do you want to have the complete widgets admin interface/screen implemented on pages? – kaiser Aug 12 '12 at 16:04
I'm not sure I understand your question; I mainly want to be able to put build custom content layouts on an ad-hoc basis, dragging and dropping various widgets as needed. For instance, my design calls for a three-column table (or 3 inline divs, whatever) with styled text in each cell, placed as-needed. I can't think of a way to make this editable without dumping a bunch of code into the Code Editor. In Panels, I'd create a Mini Panel with 3 columns, each of which would be an independently-editable custom pane. Play around with Drupal and Panels for 30 minutes to see why this is awesome. – aendrew Aug 12 '12 at 16:12
I fully understand you - even without setting up Drupal with "Panels". I just want to know if you want to have "Panels" a) on (the built in, hierarchical post type named) "pages", b) on (the non-hierarchical, also built in post type named) "posts" or c) on a custom post type named "Panels". Got me? And as you compare "Widgets" with "Panels", I asked if you want to have the "Widgets admin UI" implemented there. – kaiser Aug 12 '12 at 16:14
Ah! I see, apologies for the confusion. I'd say A., yes, B., not as necessary, C., nope. As per Widgets Admin UI -- yes, most likely, though I'm open to alternatives if that isn't possible. – aendrew Aug 12 '12 at 18:07
Also, apologies if I came off as super "Rah-Rah DRUPAL!" there; I like WordPress and it's the first CMS platform I generally suggest -- perhaps I'm just a bit surprised I don't know of anything comparable from the WP development community. – aendrew Aug 12 '12 at 18:15
show 2 more comments

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote

Have you tried PressWork? It's http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/presswork.

This post might yield some interesting leads: http://www.smartfoxes.ca/blog/2012/04/11/top-5-drag-and-drop-wordpress-themes/

share|improve this answer
I was hoping more for something in terms of a plugin so I could extend a theme I've already developed, PressWork looks pretty rad. I'll have to give that a shot sometime. – aendrew Aug 15 '12 at 13:35
I bet you could install PressWork and either 1) adapt your theme to be a child theme of PressWork, or 2) rip it apart and distill the drag and drop portions into a "plugin" of sorts. Nothing's stopping you from copying the relevant files and dependencies from PressWork into your own theme. It's on the repo so it's GPL2. And hey, if you do pluginize it, share it back to the community! – Tom Auger Aug 15 '12 at 13:43
Well, certainly I'll be using that as my parent theme from here on in -- looks rad. Will take a look at the code later, kinda curious to see how it works. Leaving question open for awhile longer to see if there are any other solutions out there, but this is a really good answer. – aendrew Aug 15 '12 at 13:55
FWIW, I just tried out PressWork, and while it does have some drag-and-drop functionality, it's nowhere near as flexible as Panels. – aendrew Sep 19 '12 at 22:57
To explain the above (was going to add it to the above but ran afoul of the 5 minute editing limit): New sidebars have to be added with hooks; widgets can't be reordered by simply dragging and dropping. It's a really nice theme in general, but still a ways off from what I'm looking for. – aendrew Sep 19 '12 at 23:04

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.